Iced Tea Safety

wdk450

Well-known member
I thought I would invade the Ladies Room after learning a little lesson this week. I made some sun ice tea one morning, drank some during the day, and when I got up the next morning there were mats of yellow algae on top of the tea in the sun tea jar on my counter. After throwing this out, I rinsed out the jar with a bleach cleaner and tried again. One day later there weren't yellow mats on top, but there was a noticeable layer of something on top of the tea. At that point I did some internet research and found out that the Centers for Disease Control advise against preparing iced tea in the "Sun Tea" method. This goes back to the old food safety adage of keeping foods either hot or cold to reduce bacterial growth. Specifically, they recommend near boiling your tea water at 195 degrees F or higher for at least 4 minutes, then steeping your tea bags, and finally cooling the prepared tea as rapidly as possible and storing it refrigerated.

I found a nice 2 quart Rubbermaid liquid storage container at WalMart that has flat sides and is a good size to store in my RV refrigerator. I use double sided velcro about 18 inches long to attach one large frozen blue ice cooler to each flat side of the hot tea-filled storage container to pre-cool it before putting it in the RV refrigerator. That also keeps the rest of the food in the refrigerator cold.

I had a little GI disturbance during the week that I attribute to the bad tea.
 

Lynn1130

Well-known member
Arizona Sun Tea was all the rage in the 50-60 and 70s until the CDC or some agency put it out that the temps, even in the Arizona sun, do not get high enough to kill bacteria.
 
Top